


That One Time Time Travel Went Ostensibly Sideways

by Yzjdriel



Category: Dunegons and Dragons, RWBY, Warframe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 00:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18355265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yzjdriel/pseuds/Yzjdriel
Summary: Gizellishia Lanaski, Cedric Tamm, Arjin Tenka, Amotmilqart Aronheim, and Xie Qing Xue are a small Clan of Tenno who stuck together at the beginning more because circumstances demanded it than due to any actual affinity. Now, though, they've become quite good friends as they do their best to make the Origin System a better place...Kailyn Keison, Sean McCabe, Chain Dupp, and Lauren Voltaire are Team KnDL. After the fall of Beacon, they decided to go to Vacuo to find an old friend of Lauren's who might be able to help protect the kingdom from being overrun by Grimm...Xelias, Sera, Jaz, Izja, and Rain are an atypical adventuring party who have just completed the long and arduous task of retrieving the Bane of Kalzath for High King Edwin the Just, thus restoring peace and prosperity to the realm (Level Up!). The next planned adventure? Find a venue for Sera and Jaz's wedding...Kevin is, well, Kevin. He's got a boring job at a boring Agency - that is, until some genius gives a megalomanic a time machine...Together with Simon, Mandy, and Craig, the three fanfic authors whose characters are caught up in this mess, they're in for quite a ride.





	That One Time Time Travel Went Ostensibly Sideways

**Author's Note:**

> Ostensibly. adv. Apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.
> 
> I'm not bothering to add Relationship tags or Character tags because everyone in this work is my own OC and it just seems a bit pretentious to think that anyone cares about which of my characters are in my story.
> 
> If things don't make sense at the beginning, don't worry. I'm working on some helpful-ish graphics to illustrate the 'big idea' of the dysfunctional multiverse.
> 
> Enjoy the ride!

Kevin was NOT having a good day.

  
First it was his alarm going off thirty seconds later than it should have done. Then it was his toaster burning one piece of toast and undercooking the other one. Then it was him spilling orange juice on his new khakis. Then it was his car refusing to start. Then it was him missing the bus. Then it was the next bus getting stuck behind a train. Then it was that same train hitting a car that had stalled on the tracks nearly a quarter mile away, grinding all the cars behind the locomotive to a halt - directly in front of his bus. Then, after the bus had taken forty-five minutes to go around the stalled train, “it was a rockslide on the gods-be-damned highway, forcing the bus to TURN AROUND and take a FOUR-AND-A-HALF-HOUR DETOUR just to travel the SIX MILES left to get to fucking Whiting!”

  
His boss sighed and motioned at him to just go to his desk. “It’s not just you. Everyone’s late today. I think there’s a disruption in the Logistics Slice again: can you call Terri and ask her what’s going on?”

  
Kevin just nodded and trudged off to his desk. Once there, he absentmindedly dialed the extension for Logistics and picked up the receiver.

“Not now, thank you!” yelled Terri, who immediately hung up.

Confused, Kevin dialed again.

“I said, NOT NOW, THANK YOU,” yelled Terri again, again hanging up.

Kevin sighed loudly, leaned back in his chair, and looked pointedly at the ceiling. “Is this the beginning of some kind of storyline?”

((Of course it is,)) replied his Author. ((Why ELSE would I throw such a big wrench into your day?))

Kevin could only shake his head in annoyance. He’d discovered the existence of his Author essentially by accident one morning when he did something he’d never done before: he asked the Universe a question.

Kevin was not a religious man - it was difficult to believe in a supreme power when his line of work brought him into regular contact with entities who called themselves ‘gods’, though that didn’t stop many of his colleagues from doing just that. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him, but he supposed to each their own method of dealing with the weirdness that was working for the InterUniversal Timeline Correction and Enforcement Agency (IUTCEA was not the most easily-pronounceable acronym, but he was told there was a Department working on that).

He had been looking for his other sock. The same sock that he had deliberately laid out on his bedside table the night before, right next to its mate. He’d risen at his alarm, eaten breakfast, showered, dressed, and then noticed that he was missing a sock that should not have been able to go missing on its own. He’d looked directly at the ceiling and asked a question of the Universe: “Why do you keep hiding my socks?”

He hadn’t expected an answer. It had honestly been more of a way to vent his frustration than anything else. What he’d received, however, quickly became a source of equal parts frustration and comfort. The Universe had answered.

Well, actually, Craig had answered. ((Because it amuses me,)) he had said to Kevin.

The ensuing conversation had been extremely interesting - at least, it had been to Craig. Kevin had mostly been equal parts confused and hungover. But as the days went on, Kevin got used to the fact that he was the protagonist in what was by any stretch of the imagination a very mundane slice-of-life story that Craig was writing in his spare time. Kind of. According to Craig, he wasn’t actually writing everything that was happening to Kevin - he was just sort of pushing major events in particular directions, implanting information into people’s heads, nudging probabilities into certain configurations, that sort of thing. The end result was that someone with about as much power as a single author in a multi-authored television show was constantly making adjustments to Kevin’s reality. For lack of a more descriptive term, Kevin decided to refer to Craig as his Author, while Craig continued to call Kevin Kevin.

That discovery had been nearly six years ago now. Craig’s tampering (at least, that’s what Kevin called it) had gradually become less tedious and more helpful as things went on. Kevin had even come to rely on him for minor things like remembering names, faces, dates, and places, among other things. In that time, he was promoted twice, and currently had a difficult job that he was quite good at that paid him a comfortable seven-figure salary - in money he couldn’t actually spend at home.

That was the one drawback to working in a different universe from where you lived - you couldn’t take money with you. As a result, the Agency provided him with a nice apartment in New Castle, a car, and a five-figure salary in money he could actually spend at home - given that his apartment was paid for already, this amounted to a comfortable amount of spending money, which Kevin regularly donated exactly the right percentage of to charity as to reduce his yearly income tax to the point where he received a tax return. He wasn’t sure if that was entirely legal, but he supposed the Agency had people for that if it wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up, and at any rate, neither was he trying to get away with anything nor was the IRS coming after him, so he supposed it wasn’t as bad as some of the things other people got Audited for.

But back to the problem at hand. “Care to elaborate?” he asked the ceiling.

((Not at the moment. I’d say you’ll get enough of the details from others soon enough.))

Kevin sighed, popped an Altoid, and went back to work.

\- -

The party had taken a well-deserved week off to make the necessary adjustments to their accoutrements that always came with a sharp increase in gold or ability - and they’d recently had both. Retrieving the Bane of Kalzath had taken them nearly a year and multiple casts of Interplanetary Teleport, and they had been justly rewarded by High King Edwin the Just for their efforts. They’d also leveled up - to Level 20. Based on the life stories of previous historical figures, they fully expected a potentially world-ending event to start to loom on the horizon with just enough warning for them to go on an epic quest to prevent it any minute now.

Rain looked at his compatriots. Xelias, a Cleric of Erastil. Xelias’s sister Sera, a Qinggong monk. Her fiancé and Rain’s former fellow street urchin Jaz, a Soulknife. Izja, a certifiably insane Sorcerer. Lastly, himself - Duke Theron Sylvaeus (or at least, that’s how he’d introduced himself to the party when they’d first met - they’d since learned his real name and promised him discretion), a dashing young fellow if he did say so himself. They’d gone through a lot together - starting from Level 3 all the way to where they were now. It had been quite the adventure.

His reminiscence was interrupted by a strange crackling noise as a large blue vertical disc fizzled into existence next to him. Izja immediately jumped to his feet and bean studying it. After a few moments, the he spoke. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he remarked slowly. “It’s not a portal created by any kind of arcane magic I’ve ever heard of.”  
“What makes you so sure it’s a portal?” asked Rain as Xelias made his attempt to study the disk.

“It’s a big floating circle, Rain,” said Sera with a sigh. “It’s ALWAYS a portal to SOMEWHERE.”

“Hmmm…” said Izja when Xelias also shook his head. “I wonder if-”

“No, don’t TOUCH IT!” yelled Jaz, but it was too late. Izja disappeared with the same crackling hiss the portal had made when it appeared, leaving nothing but the same darkly-glowing disc.

Rain sighed. “It would seem that our next adventure has come to us,” he said before also touching the disc.

He awoke on a cot in a stark white room and quickly surveyed his surroundings. Bright lights of a fashion he had never seen before were in the ceiling, the floor was some kind of uniform white tile, and the walls were clearly temporary constructions - more than likely, they were reinforced with magic. The metal door was closed and probably locked. He was still wearing his equipment - which didn’t make sense unless he wasn’t being held prisoner. What was that smell?

It took him a few minutes of thought to figure it out - it smelled like a house of medicine, so that must be where he was. As he started to look around more closely, an astral projection of a human female formed in front of him and spoke. “Hello,” she said. She was wearing a white clinical garment and an unfamiliar tool was around her neck. It was likely that the medical knowledge of this place differed greatly from that of his home.

“Greetings, Physician,” he replied, bowing graciously. “My name is Duke Theron Sylvaeus. What shall I call you?”

“My name is Doctor Reynolds,” she said. “Your tests came back negative - I don’t think you’ll suffer any ill effects from the displacement. Your friends are waiting for you.” She gestured to the door, which swung open. That was a nice trick, considering Rain’s Arcane Sight wasn’t sensing any magic from the projection.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, and strode through the door to find the rest of his party in a dark room, seated on a circular bench around a large orange projection of… well, an _orange._ Specifically, a _peeled_ orange. Rain stopped in his tracks. This was most certainly not the _strangest_ thing the party had ever stopped to inspect, but it was definitely the most _mundane_ thing the party had ever found in such a prominent location. “Uhh…” he said.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” another physician said brightly, looking up from a small tablet that was emitting light from the side that faced her. “Let’s explain why you’re all here.” Rain’s mood brightened as his first question was immediately noted as ostensibly being the first to get answered. “Are you all familiar with the concept of time travel?”

“Travel?” asked Izja blithely. “Rain here doesn’t just travel in time, he steals it.”

“Not yet I don’t,” corrected Rain hastily. “I’m only Level 2.”

“Oh, good,” the doctor said. “That makes this easier, then.” She tapped something on her tablet, and the orange separated into eight segments. All but one immediately vanished, replaced with a crude line drawing of a person in a three-dimensional grid of cubes. Part of the cube became opaque, creating a picture of a person standing on the side of a hill. “When you travel in space, you move along one of an infinite number of three-dimensional spatial planes.” As she spoke, an illustration of the many linear spatial planes briefly flashed into view around the moving figure. “When you travel in time, you move along one of an equally infinite number of temporal planes.” A similar graphic displayed, this time in different colors. “Unfortunately, time travel isn’t always possible.” The projection zoomed in on the orange segment. “Let’s say for the sake of convenience that your universe is this orange slice. When you move in space, you travel along the orange in one of these directions.” A single datum plane lit up, perpendicular to the edge of the segment. “When you move around, you won’t ever move any closer to the top or the bottom of the slice, but you’ll move closer to the inside or outside edge as well as the left or right wall. If you travel in time, you’ll shift to a different timeline, which would be another similar plane, but closer to either the top or the bottom of the slice.” The datum plane moved toward one of the points.

“And if you move FAR enough,” she continued as the graphic zoomed out again to show the other seven slices of the orange were touching the original slice at the point, “you might end up in another Slice entirely.” The datum plane crossed over the touched points to a different segment of the orange. “Now imagine that each Slice is connected to other Slices at both ends.” The graphic zoomed out to illustrate this. “What you are looking at is the Multiverse as we understand it.”

“I’m confused,” said Sera slowly. “Are you saying we ended up crossing over a junction of some kind?”

“Not exactly,” the doctor replied as a different layer of orange slices superimposed itself on top of the first layer. “You sort of… fell into our Slice through a hole in your own. Which brings us to why we’re here. Someone is ripping holes in the Multiverse, and we need your help to fix them.”

\- -

It had been two weeks since the fall of Beacon, and Kailyn was getting real tired of fighting aquatic Grimm.

They still had four days left on their journey to Vacuo, since they’d decided to go the long way and escort a group of civilians back from the Vytal festival. The captain had gladly agreed to give them free passage in exchange for their help defending his vessel from the increased Grimm activity.

The passengers were very relieved to find out they had four extra Huntsmen on board when the first Feilong attacked.

The ship’s employed Hunstmen were relieved that they had four extra Hunstmen on board when the second Feilong attacked.

Kailyn was relieved that there were four large dust-powered cannons on board when the fifth Feilong attacked.

“I don’t think someone wants us getting to Vacuo,” remarked Lauren sarcastically as team KnDL sprung into action once again. “It’s either that or we’re having the worst luck anyone’s ever had.”

“Given our track record,” said Sean as he loaded a rack of Dust rounds into his hammer/shotgun, “I’d say it’s not bad luck. I think someone’s just determined to make our lives difficult.” A second Feilong stuck its head above the water. “Case in point.”

“Well, so much for easy mode,” sighed Chain. “Let’s see if I can hold two of them in place at once.” He pushed the kunai through his chain and began spinning it around his head like a lasso. “Though I can give it a shot.”

“We’ve got the one to port,” Kailyn told their fellow Hunstmen Carmen and Claire. “Don’t bother, Chain. We need to focus on one at a time. Let CiCi fend off the other one for now.”

“You got it, Boss. Gimme a lift?” Chain jerked his head at the serpent to port.

Kailyn cracked her knuckles. “Sure thing.” With a flick of her wrist, she directed gravity to pull Chain directly toward the Grimm’s head, then drew her sword. The sea dragon, seeing the boy flying straight for it, opened its mouth, prepared to blast Chain, and promptly froze completely still as Chain’s Semblance locked it in place. “Your go, Lauren.”

“Aww yeah,” said Lauren as she concentrated on Chain’s chain. Just when he reached the serpent’s gaping mouth, Kailyn abruptly changed the direction of his personal gravity. As he sailed dangerously close to the ball of lightning in its mouth, he threw the chain lasso down the Feilong’s throat, then stabbed it in the eye with the other end. “Gocha!” Lauren yelled in triumph as Chain closed his eyes.

The result was nothing short of spectacular. Chain floated majestically away from the Grimm, propelled by Kailyn’s Semblance, as the electricity from inside its mouth was redirected from its intended target by Lauren’s Semblance onto the wrought-iron chain and straight into its eye. Immediately the serpent writhed in pain, its own breath blinding it. It retaliated by trying to blast more lightning, which only served to damage its eye further. In a matter of seconds, its head dissolved, quickly followed by the rest of it.

Kailyn reversed Chain’s flight with a gesture, turned to see how the other Feilong was faring, and instead saw two slack-jawed Hunstmen. “How did you-“ began Claire, but she was cut off by a loud cry from behind her.

“LOOK OUT!” yelled a deckhand as the other Feilong, having seen the fate of its fellow, blasted lighting directly at Chain. From its angle, the shot came across the bow of the ship, catching Lauren and Sean full-force, staggering Lauren and sending Sean flying toward the still-floating Chain.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” gasped Kailyn as she cancelled Chain’s gravity adjustment, falling to her knees from strain. “Oof. That was at the edge of my range.”

Chain, meanwhile, had thrown his impromptu lasso around Sean while in midair and was now struggling to reel him in. Two other hands ran to help as Lauren stood up shakily. “Hot DAMN, am I glad my armor’s amazing!” she yelled before collapsing onto one knee again. “Okay, fine, I’ll stay down,” she said cheerily. “I’m just as able to fight from this position.  Sort of.”

Carmen and Claire had wasted no time getting back to fighting. Claire had created a large smoke cloud between the starboard Grimm and the ship, which had been accelerating toward the beast the whole time, and Carmen had dropped to a sniper’s crouch, her rifle in hand. The Feilong blasted the smoke away to find itself staring down the barrel of four of the ship’s broadside guns, mouth wide open. After a few seconds’ barrage from four cannons and a 50-caliber rifle, it too dissolved into smoke.

“Alright!” shouted Carmen enthusiastically. “Now you guys gotta tell us how you did that.”

Kailyn shrugged as Chain helped Sean get both feet back on board. “Did what?"

"Are you kidding?  You kind of just killed a Feilong in less than a minute!"

Kailyn looked at her in confusion.  "The same way you did?  We just took advantage of our strengths. I mean, you just used the ship’s position to trick that one into opening its mouth for all the guns to fire into.”

“That was a fluke,” said Claire. “It’s always taken at least ten minutes to take one of these out before. You guys just took the second one out in seconds! And we’d been charging at that one for a good eight minutes, shooting guns and smoke grenades at it the whole way. Took out its wings well before we got close enough to blast it apart - that hardly counts as quick and easy."

Kailyn sighed. “Fair enough. It was an idea we had after the last one. Lauren can’t control their lightning breath, but she CAN control the electric potential of the chain. All we needed to do was get it to shoot lightning at Chain and pray I didn’t run out of range.”

Carmen shook her head in disbelief. “You’re insane.”

“That’s the name of the game, sister,” said Lauren jovially as she stood up, leaning heavily on a deckhand. “Now if you’ll excuse me, taking 75% of the blast from a Sea Feilong’s mouth laser is **not** something I planned to do today, electricity Semblance or no. I’m gonna go take a nap.”

Chain thumped her on the back enthusiastically before taking over the job of helping her walk.  "Dude, that was SO COOL!  Why didn't we do that to the first one?"  
  
"Because we didn't need Lauren being incapacitated for the eight hours it'll take her to shake off the delirium," retorted Kailyn matter-of-factly.  "Or did you forget she's _useless_  until then?"

Comprehension dawned on Carmen's face.  "One-shot Semblance?  Those are tough," she added when Sean nodded wearily.  "Makes sense why you didn't bother trying before now."

"Let's just hope she's up before any more of them attack," said Claire, watching the skies warily.  "I've only ever heard stories about the Sea Feilong before this trip.  I am not liking our odds if more show up.  We're bound to run out of Dust eventually, and we're only halfway to Vacuo."

Kailyn couldn't agree more.  Not even when that massive dragon-Grimm had attacked Beacon had things seemed so thoroughly stacked against them.  She shuddered to think of what would happen if they had to fight three large Grimm at once - Lauren or no Lauren.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments shall be read, but only after they are appreciated.


End file.
